BIG MAN ON CAMPUS (1989)

This shit didn’t click with me. Long-story short, there’s a fully-grown adult dude living in a clock tower at a large university in Los Angeles. He’s hairier than Cousin Itt’s left nut and spends all of his time watching a female student by the name of Cathy. Shit happens and he swings down on a rope to break up a fight involving her. Dude is taken into custody and instead of being place under state care, he’s released under the supervision of the university. Naturally, the school assigns a single student, Cathy’s boyfriend and full-time Steve Guttenberg impersonator, Alex to watch over ol’ boy 24 / 7. Makes sense.

I don’t know, I’m already bored with this review. Ends up the dude’s name is Bob Maloogaloogaloogaloogalooga (hardy-har-har, isn’t that funny?!) and the reason he was in the tower is because when he was a little child his father abandoned him, then his mom died and some people abused him and he ran away and was homeless forever. Wow, that’s a really great story for a comedy. Nothing funnier than life-destroying child abuse.

Okay pacing, weak story, zero nudity, zero gore, one joke that was later used in ZOOLANDER (the "center for ants" bit), a drink called "TEAM (Decaf)" (I have no idea what that is, some sort of coffee I guess), the dudes hump is never explained and barely even mentioned, no cursing, disappointing ending, a cop car arriving twice. Another thing that bothered me about this film was how boring the college setting was. Usually when a movie is filmed on a college campus you get to see some interesting fashions and people (or maybe even a dude with a clapperboard!), but in BIG MAN ON CAMPUS it was really bland. Even the mall scene was weak.

I’m sure there are tens of billions of thousands of people out there who love this movie, I just found the entire thing to be lifeless and dull. Also, Bob Maloogaloogaloogaloogalooga's voice was really annoying. Watch it if you want.

[This has nothing to do with the review, but this story was told again in the blu-ray extras. Like, the whole story is confusing because how much did this movie cost? And did it even make money? Why would somebody turn down a million dollars (in 1980's money) to not do something?]

SPACECAMP (1986)

A group of teenagers attend NASA's Space Camp program.  Things are going pretty well and it looks like that one dude might get to sling some ding-a-ling at Lea Thompson, but then whiny kid (Joaquin Phoenix) mentions that he wants to go into space.  Normally that would be a safe thing to say, especially at goddamn Space Camp, but since he says it within earshot of the extremely literal and sweetly sinister robot Jinx it means he's going into space whether he likes it or not!  Because they are friends foreveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrr.  Next thing you know Jinx has manipulated a test on the Space Shuttle into the real thing and the kids blast off into orbit...with only a few hours worth of oxygen.  Note to self: never befriend a well-meaning, but extremely stupid robot.

Released just a few months after the heartbreaking Space Shuttle Challenger disaster SPACECAMP was pretty much destined to fail at the box office and it did with only $9 million at the box office...I have no idea what the budget was though.  But is it a good movie?  Ehh, it's alright.  The story is silly and from what I could tell during the Space Camp scenes all of the kids were a bunch of fuck-ups but then suddenly when they get into space they suddenly become way smarter.  I guess that's what being faced with death will do for ya.  Anyway, their efforts not to die are mildly interesting and the special effects are probably above average for the time, but I still found myself apathetic towards their dilemma.  Which is kind of surprising since I usually like trapped in space adventure movies.  Unfortunately though, with just an average director and an average script SPACECAMP itself turned out boringly average.